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Mode

It’s pure fun to listen to N-Joy, a North-German broadcaster, in DAB+. This digital mode should replace all classical FM broadcast, and has already done this in some countries where others offer both – like Germany.

DAB+ takes place in former TV bands. Several stations are bundled in a bouqet. In Germany, one usually is in comfortable reach of at least one of these bunches, see footprint on a map, with stations around my location:

Footprint of DAB+ broadcasts in Germany. Pin = my location. In the list you see the stations plus the channel (“bouquet”), here 5C omnidirectional from Hannover with 10 kW and 6C, also from Hannover, but pointed to the east, with 8 kW.

As AirSpy is covering also these frequencies with high sensitivity and a decent dynamic range, I gave it a try.

First software used is called Welle (English: wave) by a team around Albrecht Lohofener. I use it on a PC/W10. It’s easy to install, and then start it by the usual double-click. An MS-DOS windows opens, starting a routine for searching and opening the AirsSpy connected to your PC. This window informs you on all steps the software is doing.

Then the graphical user interface starts. First you have to scan the bands: click “Sendersuchlauf -> Start” (the software detects on what country code your OS is running and switches automatically to e.g. English), see screenshot:

The scan is running, 13 stations have been found so far. With expert mode (“Expertenmodus”) activated, you see the spectrum of the frequncy set being scanned.

From the spectrum (right), you might see if HF gain ius ok, or that you should go from automatic (“Auto HF-Verstärkung”) to manual gain control (“Manuelle Versätrkung”) to either imporve sensitivity or to avoid distortion due to strong transmitters nearby. With me, “Auto” drives fine.

After finishing the scan, “Welle” comes down with the bouquets in reach:

Just click your station from the list on the left, and the station will be heard. Many of them provice additonal information, as here MDR Sputnik with weather. On the right you again see the spectrum of the whole bouquet (6B, 183,648 MHz) plus additional information an the quality.

Secondly, a more technical approach is offered by Jan van Katwijk with also free Qt-DAB. I also use it on my PC/W10. After downloading the suite, containing also other intersting software, just start “qt-dab-0.999”. An MS-DOS windows opens, followed after some seconds by the GUI. Here you have to define the receiver from a drop-down list, choose the boquet (5C, in this case), and scanning serves you the stations’ list. You may have up to five different windows open – from the MS-DOS window to more detailed technical data, including a QPSK phase window, right from the spectrum.

Qt-DAB presents you with up to five windows: MS-DOS on top; gain control main window and technical data below, and spectrum plus QPSK phase constellation at the bottom. “Klassik Radio” on 173,352 MHz playing Bach: “What God does that is done well”. Not to talk of what the authors of the DAB software had done …

Thanks to both, Albrecht and Jan, to have developed this fine piece to software, free of charge!

HFDL is a net for data communications between airplanes and ground. The results can be shown on Google Earth. This screenshot shows a part of 29.000+ entries, received and processed on August 15th, 2016.

Communications between air and ground is mostly done on VHF, UHF and SHF. But if an aircraft is out of reach of a ground station station due to the limited “radio horizon” of these bands, it has to maintain communications by either satellite or HF. This HFDL net is in fact the most massive professional user of HF right now. Within 24 hours, I get more than 40.000 live messages with a modest equipment.

With his software Display Launcher, Mike Simpson from Australia provides a most valuable tool to analyze up to nine channels in parallel. His software also draws positions and routes onto Google Earth. Mike has spent much energy on coping with many inconsistencies of transmitted data before it all really goes smoothly.

This free software is the vital part of a monitoring project to receive, demodulate and analyze live up to nine HFDL channels in parallel. Other ingredients you need is a software-defined radio (SDR), nine virtual audio cables (in fact, a piece of software) and a decoder software. Don’t forget an antenna and a PC …

This setup comprises a semi-professional monitoring station which will allow you to receive and track many of the nearly 3.000 airplanes using HFDL. This also covers the military, business jets, helicopters and some other delicate users. It maybe used as an important complement to Flightradar24’s web service, whenever their VHF/UHF/SHF-based net is out of range of the aircraft. This is particularly true over vast water masses like oceans and sparsely populated land masses. Furthermore, Flightradar24 erases some sensible flights from the raw material before publication on their website. This is clearly no “censorship”, but some thoughtfulness in regard to those countries where reception and publication of HFDL data is more tolerated than explicitly encouraged by the government.

In a 9-page PDF, I published a step-by-step recipe on how to set up such an HF monitoring station for up to nine parallel HFDL channel. You can download it here.

Digital communications with digimodes is a very efficient tool of HF communications. Hams are using RTTY for decades. Since the advent of PSK31 in late 1998, there have been developed a lot of digimodes with special applications in mind. Albeit, RTTY and PSK31 are still very popular.

When I asked myself: “What’s the best mode?”, I couldn’t get a reliable answer. And, really, it depends.

As a result, I made a setup for testing some chat modes on HF channels which are very much different from just flat noisy (AWGN) channels. The results were very much surprising: There are by far better alternatives to RTTY and PSK31 (see table above, reflecting some of the results).

This paper deals with setting up a real-world testbed and presents some results. Anyone is welcomed to replicate the test and/or extend it with other modes. Recent software of W1JHK has made the workflow much easier and faster since then.

It is a basic version of a German paper of 28 pages which you will find here. Thanks to its 65 and mostly self-explaining screenshots, it will make an interesting reading also for people who don’t speak “The Awful German Language” (Mark Twain, 1880). Click here to download this enlarged Version.Google Translate also offers a great help in reading it.